Fat Guy

I believe that for the overwhelming majority of people being overweight, without more, is not a health risk. And I think the suggestion that food-focused communities support being significantly overweight is not only risible but also nonsensical to anybody who has bothered to read the decisive refutations already posted on this topic.

Those anecdotes -- which by the way do not square with my observations at all, and I've been to more online foodie events than most -- are not even close to being evidence in any meaningful sense of the word. I would love to see a population study of 1,000 online foodies versus 1,000 members of the general population, randomly selected and controlled for age, gender, race and all the other factors good studies control for. I really wonder what it would show. But since no such study has been done, I think it's kind of silly to assume we know that the results would demonstrate an unusual health problem. Certainly, the data could just as easily show that online foodies are as a group exceptionally healthy.

I've been mulling over this statement, without eating or destroying it, for a bit and I just can't see why this destroyed/not-destroyed distinction matters in any way at all. I'm all for getting at the philosophical underpinnings of the theories behind criticism -- this is a particularly rich realm when it comes to literary criticism -- but who cares that the food gets consumed? So if I go to a wine tasting and spit the wine instead of swallowing it, I've made a philosophical distinction? If I chew and spit my food instead of consuming it, I've made a philosophical distinction? I think it's possible to come up with rhetoric about how when you consume food it becomes a part of you, integrated with your being, you are what you eat, etc., but I think those comments are meaningless in the context of comparing food criticism to other forms of criticism. Rather, I think if there is a theoretical distinction to be drawn, it's between those who see food criticism as a form of arts criticism and those who see it as a form of consumer protection. If food criticism is a form of arts criticism, the issue of comps is pretty much moot. If food criticism is about consumer protection, it may indeed make sense to follow the Consumer Reports model where the publication pays for everything no matter what, as a means of establishing a true arms-length relationship with the industry under review. However, I'd also point out that every publication I know of except for Consumer Reports fails that test miserably. Because if you're going to have a true arms-length system, you need to do everything Consumer Reports does: you need to be entirely reader supported and have no advertising, and you need to pay for everything -- not just meals but cars, computers and everything else you review.

My reading of your posts is that you only think diabetes is irrelevant if you're wrong about it. It was, in part, about diabetes. So I'm not sure what the word "specifically" means in that sentence. Perhaps it means the article isn't only about diabetes. That's certainly true. Health problems like diabetes? Did the article say that? I have no idea whether that's a true statement or not. In any event, let's come back to the other people in the article in a moment. As far as I can tell based on the weights and heights noted in the article, only one of the people interviewed was morbidly obese. "Morbidly obese" is a defined term that at present means a BMI of 40+. In terms of whether morbid obesity is a health problem, it certainly can be. But the BMI measure is flawed as has already been explained on this topic and in a million other places, and it's entirely possible to be fit with a BMI of 40+, as 3% of NFL players are. So no, being defined as "morbidly obese" by a flawed definition does not establish a health problem. Now if somebody's weight is interfering with basic physiological functions (breathing, walking) then, sure, that's a health problem. That can occur in different people at different weights. Now let me ask you a question, Melkor. Do you have any evidence that the incidence of morbid obesity, or just obesity, is higher among online foodies than it is among the general population? And would you agree that, if it isn't higher, everything you're saying is beside the point?

It's not my position that the diabetes epidemic is actually an epidemic of diagnosis. I didn't invent it. I read it. It's the position of diabetes researchers -- you know, people who have made it their life's work -- as reported in their published work. As for people with no background -- people who haven't done the reading, haven't done any critical thinking, and are not the slightest bit skeptical of conventional wisdom -- making authoritative statements with no basis, I agree that's pretty funny. ← You're picking a small detail in the larger discussion and focusing on it as if it were relevant. ← If your position is that diabetes is not relevant to this discussion, that's kind of funny too. I'll be the first to say that diabetes is not the whole discussion. But irrelevant? No, it's highly relevant. It's relevant because what I've found in researching this topic extensively -- from a journalistic perspective, of course, as I'm not a medical professional (I suck at math and can't stand the sight of blood) -- over a period of a nearly a decade is that when we start unpacking the specific beliefs about obesity and health that underly the conventional wisdom there's some pretty surprising (to most people) information there. Diabetes is one example. I imagine that almost everybody reading this topic thought the notion of a diabetes epidemic was axiomatic. Now at least I hope everybody reading this topic sees that there is a body of evidence and thinking that says it's a hoax. I don't expect everybody to agree with that position, but I hope at least some folks now know the position exists and has support in credible, mainstream publications.

Surely this line of reasoning is flawed for at least two major reasons. First, the medical professionals posting here may not be diabetes experts. Second, we don't have enough medical professionals posting here to indicate any sort of consensus position -- not that I disagree about the existence of a consensus position that I believe to be wrong. More significantly, though, consensus is just not relevant to science. Science is about truth independent of what anyone or everyone believes, expert or no. While it's interesting to note where a consensus has arisen in a professional community, history has taught us time and again that we'd be foolish to assume majority positions are always right.

But they are being well served if early detection and treatment can help ward off more severe disease and complications. The truth, though, is that those people are rarely started out on drug regimens. They are usually treated with dietary modifications. ← John, I think you -- and anybody else interested in this subject -- would find this piece in American Family Physician ("New Diabetes Guidelines: A Closer Look at the Evidence," by Woolf and Rothemich) to be a good summary of the opposite position, if you haven't read it already. Woolf and Rothemich note that and that therefore They make several arguments as to why this is a bad idea. First, they point to studies that conflict with the studies underlying the new diagnostic threshold. Second, they note that Third, they point to the scant evidence that correcting mild elevations in glucose levels improves health. Furthermore, they argue: More recently, there were some real blockbuster study results reported earlier this year that undercut the conventional medical wisdom about type 2 diabetes. As the New York Times summarized: Those reports followed on the heels of the Avandia controversy. For those who missed it, the short version is: I posted earlier about the "epidemic of diagnoses," and I hope folks took a look at that article. In any event, it's not as cut and dry as "early detection is good." There's a lot more to it than that.

Yeah, it's sort of a hybrid model. There are three cooks behind the 14-seat counter. Each one is the relationship manager for a bloc of customers. So the guy at my end of the counter served me and the three or four people to my right. But the actual plating of the dishes follows various workflow patterns depending on where the components come from. For example our guy seemed to have all the cold stuff, so whenever sorbet needed to be plated or foie gras needed to be shaved over anybody's plate he did that. I found that watching the cooks in action was a lot less of a spectacle than I expected or hoped for. It's not at all like hanging out on a regular restaurant-kitchen line, or even like it was watching the Noodle Bar cooks work in the previous incarnation of that space. There's a lot more actual cooking action when you watch the griddle cook at a diner. At Ko there's nobody back there flipping stuff in a saute pan or anything like that. The dishes have been designed for maximum advance prep-ability. So what you're watching, mostly, is late-stage finishing and plating. In the process of putting the kitchen front and center they actually made it less interesting.

The restaurant has not done a good job communicating on this point. On the one hand, there's the language on the main reservation screen telling vegetarians to get lost. On the other hand, when you get a reservation and move past the confirmation screen you're asked to note allergies and dietary restrictions. According to our cook, they're eager to accommodate allergies and such, but just don't have enough different stuff in inventory to make an entirely vegetarian meal. It would be simple enough to say that all in one place on the website.

Oh a little update on the egg. Not only is the egg not cooked sous vide, it's not even cooked in a low-temperature water bath. It's just boiled for four minutes in the shell, then peeled carefully. In the pictures, it looks a lot like the water-bath eggs at Noodle Bar but in reality the texture of the white is much firmer than that. Also, I can't recall if this was mentioned yet, the smoke flavor is added after cooking by placing the egg in a smoke-flavored water solution.

The Minibar experience is quite dynamic and interactive, even though it's a set menu. Conversely, if you sit at the sushi bar at Yasuda or even Nobu and order even the cheapo lunch special you get a full hospitality experience from your sushi chef. I also wouldn't be surprised, over time, to see more flexibility in the Ko format. Right now they're probably at the outer limits of what they can handle just getting the food out. I imagine that once they get more comfortable there will be room for some improvisation of the "Oh, so you like strong nori flavors? Try this dish, then." variety.

(That guy was seated next to me and was indeed the restaurant's fish purveyor. He was there to meet with Peter after service. I don't think he and his companion ate anything -- maybe a dish of sorbet or something; they mostly just had some sake and talked fish with the chef.)

Can you explain this Le Cirque comparison more clearly? My memories of the Le Cirque of yore consist mostly of joy in eating a perfect chocolate stove (they always fawned over me, but waiters tend to do that with overdressed children). I've always thought of Le Cirque as having been a "see and be seen" type spot, which I don't think Momofuku is at all. In fact, I basically think of the Momofukus as neighborhood spots that happens to be awesome. Are you suggesting that Momofuku is some sort of pick up scene? ← The specifics of Momofuku are totally different from the specifics of Le Cirque. Yet Momofuku is just as much of a social enterprise as Le Cirque ever was. Not see-and-be-seen social in the shallow sense but, rather, place-to-be social in the sense of being a central institution for a specific subculture.

Out of curiosity, how would you compare the service/seating to that of the high-end sushi bars in town? ← The chef-customer interaction as Ko is, at present, an order of magnitude inferior to the chef-customer interaction at a great sushi bar. Many if not all of the best sushi chefs are dedicated to the interactive aspect of the role -- they're chefs, bartenders, psychoanalysts and teachers all at once. I certainly think the smart, capable, friendly chefs at Ko can grow into that kind of role, and at this point I think it's better that they've focused on making the food excellent rather than worrying about showmanship to the detriment of food. But evolution would be desirable. Most sushi bars, even crummy ones, have more comfortable seats than Ko.

Just to clarify: the scallop dish on offer last night was essentially the fluke dish from the preview menu but with scallops as the sashimi. There was a dish that had the overly oceanic problem -- striped bass used in a preparation aesthetically related to the scallop preparation from the preview menu -- and I though it was the weakest non-dessert link in the progression for exactly the reason J didn't like the scallops. That being said, those powerful nori-type flavors are in the category of things like uni, monkfish liver and anchovies -- some people can't get enough of those flavors and others can't acquire the taste.

Two days ago I got food poisoning. I think it was from spinach pie that had been languishing in the danger zone of lukewarm temperatures ideal for microbial growth. Or maybe it was just a stomach virus that had nothing to do with food. In any event, it was bad for a number of reasons not least of which was that it created a degree of uncertainty over whether I’d be able to make my hard-won 9:45pm reservation at Momofuku Ko tonight. In the morning, I experimented with bread. I seemed to be able to tolerate that. In the afternoon, I escalated to pasta. Again, no problem. But I was nonetheless exhausted, drained by the ordeal. At 7pm I was still undecided. At 8:30pm I decided to cancel the reservation, but as my finger hovered over the button on my mouse I lost my nerve. After all, when would I get another chance to go to Ko? It’s not exactly easy to get a reservation, and I’m heading out of town soon for a couple of weeks, and then who knows what will happen? I wasn’t going to let three days of obsessive 10am mouse-clicking go to waste. I steeled myself and headed out into the night. I arrived at Ko 12 minutes early. Now, those of you who have seen the reservation confirmation email from Ko know that there’s firm language about how you’ll lose your seat if you’re 15 minutes late. So it seems to me that 12 minutes early means I did a good job timing the subways so as to avoid lateness while not being ridiculously early. I was therefore a bit taken aback when the waitress who greeted me barked “You’re early,” as though I had done something wrong. What was I supposed to do? Stand out in the street until exactly 9:45pm? Service at Ssam Bar and Noodle Bar has, in my experience, tended to be quite good. The warmth and knowledge of the servers is one of the nice surprises of eating at those two Momofukus. In general, the service at Ko does not replicate that experience, in part because the actual servers (the two waitresses) at Ko aren’t very good and in part because the cooks, who provide most of the service, are culinary professionals not service professionals. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy the interaction with our cook. I did, especially towards the end of the meal as the restaurant emptied out and he loosened up. And the structure of the menu and the design of the restaurant are such that there’s not a lot of practical need for service beyond bringing and describing food and wine. Still, given that Ko is now the flagship the servers need to be trained at least up to Ssam Bar standards, and preferably higher. Underdeveloped service and uncomfortable chairs (backless stools at Ssam Bar and Noodle Bar are one thing, but they’re a backbreaking choice for a two-hour tasting-menu format) are the extent of my complaints about Ko. The food is the logical next step after the first two Momofuku incarnations. It’s a more evolved, refined, precise implementation of the same culinary aesthetic. It starts at the haute end of the Ssam Bar and Noodle Bar spectrum and the goes beyond. There have always been dishes at Ssam Bar and Noodle Bar that could fit right in at restaurants on the Jean Georges level, but every dish at Ko is on that level. Although I did find myself thinking, about halfway through the meal, how nice it would be to have some pork buns and a plate of country ham. Part of what makes Ssam Bar and Noodle Bar so appealing is that effortless admixture of haute and rustic. Ko is all haute. There were several comprehensive early reports on the individual dishes, so I won’t pile on. The foie gras, pork belly, scallop and short rib dishes are particular triumphs. In the year 2008 it’s no longer surprising or even worthy of comment when you go to a good restaurant and get good ingredients, but some of the ingredients they’re using at Ko are revelatory. Those scallops, which apparently hail from New Jersey, are better than what I’ve had at some of the most expensive sushi restaurants in town. I’ve never had better pork belly, ingredient-wise. Likewise, Asian ingredients and techniques are so much a part of American culinary culture now that the term “fusion” is no longer relevant, but Ko really raises the bar when it comes to effortless multicultural haute cuisine. Desserts, for the time being, are rudimentary; that’s the one area of the meal where I felt I’ve had several superior items at Ssam Bar. I had a reservation for one, and I got seated next to a lovely woman who was also a solo diner. I’m glad that happened because, as we were chatting about favorite restaurants and other points of commonality it hit me that the Momofukus are today’s incarnation of Le Cirque, or at least what I imagine Le Cirque was like in its heyday. Of course in many ways Momofuku and Le Cirque are so different that comparing them seems bizarre, and I bet Le Cirque is the restaurant that Momofuku adherents are most likely to have contempt for, but each is a foundational restaurant for a certain place, time and culture. While all the Momofukus adopt a militant food-focused stance, the Momofuku phenomenon can’t be comprehended without reference to its clientele any more than Le Cirque can. In retrospect, just about every time I’ve dined at one of the Momofukus I’ve met new people and seen people I know. I thought back to the time I was at Noodle Bar (when Ko was Noodle Bar) and wound up sitting next to Herve This’s editor from Columbia University Press. I later saw her at an Experimental Cuisine Collective meeting and a woman tried to introduce us. When we said we’d already met at Momofuku, the woman said, “Everybody meets at Momofuku!” What she meant was that the Momofukus are Le Cirque for today’s twenty- and thirty-something foodies (plus older folks who are exceptionally cool). As I approach no longer being a thirty-something foodie, it’s a pleasure to be part of the Momofuku moment.

It's hard for me to see how the experimental reservations policy at one highly unusual restaurant, out of 20,000 in just one city, will have such alarming consequences. ← There are two levels of the position being expressed on this topic, with some people expressing both. On one level, there's the position that regulars should and will get rewarded, just not with reservations. I don't have a profound disagreement with that position, but do feel it's worth noting the reality that without access none of those other rewards are actually available. On a deeper level, we've seen impassioned arguments for a whole passive school of consumer thought that says we should be grateful for whatever crumbs restaurants deign to toss their regulars and that to expect more is [insert any of six or seven incendiary terms here]. With that position, you bet I have a profound disagreement. Having been asked to move on, and having repeatedly made the best case I'm able to make here, this will have to be my last word on the subject of Momofuku Ko's reservation system for now. I'm happy to continue discussing the larger issue, and of course I look forward to watching Ko's progress (not to mention eating there).

So glad I don't live on your planet. ← Since we all do live on the same planet, our actions affect one another. Passive consumer attitudes are damaging to consumers in general.

Pretty much. When some consumers settle for less than they deserve, it's bad for all consumers.

I think the defining down of the diagnostic threshold for type 2 diabetes -- as well as several other diseases and conditions -- is indeed a hoax. A good explanation of this position can be found in a 2007 essay in the New York Times, titled "What's Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses." (I'm quoting New York Times articles mainly to demonstrate that my positions are only as extreme as what has already been published in the newspaper that said my positions border on extreme -- but all the underlying information is available from a variety of secondary and primary sources.) A few excerpts from an article that's well worth reading in full.

I made this point repeatedly to Kim Severson during our interview, however I guess there wasn't room in the article to note it.

It's not my position that the diabetes epidemic is actually an epidemic of diagnosis. I didn't invent it. I read it. It's the position of diabetes researchers -- you know, people who have made it their life's work -- as reported in their published work. As for people with no background -- people who haven't done the reading, haven't done any critical thinking, and are not the slightest bit skeptical of conventional wisdom -- making authoritative statements with no basis, I agree that's pretty funny.

Diabetes in not a hoax. The notion of a massively escalating type 2 diabetes epidemic is. As reported in the New York Times last year, as Dave has already referenced, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey has shown that the rate of diabetes in the population has risen little over time. Rather, detection has increased. To a certain extent, that's a good thing. However, separately, the diagnostic threshold for type 2 diabetes has been lowered over time, such that people are being diagnosed with diabetes today who -- even if tested and evaluated -- would not have been diagnosed as such in the past. Those people -- the ones in the 140 to 126 mg/dL category -- are not being well served by diagnoses of type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc., and especially not by the attendant drug regimens. Of course there are also people out there who have diabetes for real and are undiagnosed. Most every non-fictitious disease, in that regard, is underdiagnosed -- even the overdiagnosed ones.

It occurs to me that this might be unmanageable. Let's suppose Chang has 24 seats a night (allowing for multiple seatings), and that he holds 8 of them open for regulars and VIPs.The trouble is, he could easily have 50 people a day with a reasonable claim on those 8 seats. However he prioritizes them, he's going to be saying no to the majority in any case. I realize that all restauranteurs need to set priorities, but has there ever been a 12-seat restaurant with this kind of early demand? ← How many serious regulars do you think the Momofuku enterprise has? Pick any reasonable number, then let's do some math. I think you'll find that it's pretty simple in the course of, say, a couple of months, to accommodate each of your regulars once or twice even with just eight seats a day (2 months of 8 seats a day 6 days a week would be about 400 seats, if I'm not mistaken). Add to that the ability to hand out cancellations to regulars by using a wait-list system and you've got a lot of flexibility, all of which can be automated. Of course if Momofuku's regulars don't want priority in reservations, so be it. Easier for me to get them instead. There are of course precedents for very small restaurants dealing with high demand. Kitchen Counter at Beacon comes to mind as a recent example. I assure you, if one of Beacon's major regulars wants dinner at the Kitchen Counter, it will be made to happen. That person will get priority in various ways: perhaps the opportunity to reserve ahead of the crowd, perhaps priority in getting seats that open due to cancellations. And if that doesn't work, you can be sure that the restaurant will do another sitting or find some way to accommodate its regulars. Ditto for Minibar in Washington, DC. Sure, it's a perennially tough table. But somehow Jose Andres's regulars manage to get seats there when they need to. I'm not a regular but, as someone who has a relationship with Jose, the last time I was in DC and wanted to go to Minibar he said he'd get us in if there was a cancellation -- and there was a cancellation so we got to eat there; more famously, for a super-VIP customer, Jose once opened Minibar in the morning -- he and his cooks came in at 4am to prep and did the whole Minibar service in time for this person to catch a plane out of town. You don't hear these guys saying "No favorites. No exceptions." You see them bending over backwards to figure out ways to be accommodating.

I'll take that bet. You think the Parisian businesspeople who eat lunch several times a month at Pierre Gagnaire don't expect to have tables made available to them? You think Ducasse's regulars everywhere in the world don't expect special treatment from every outpost of that restaurant group? They do and they should. Regardless, as I've explained before, this question of "expectation" is a red herring. Whether they "expect" it or not, consumers reward businesses that reward consumer loyalty. As they should.